Fear

I spent the weekend in the hospital with my almost three year old son. He was rushed to the ER with respiratory distress and damn near coded. The ER staff was amazing and stabilized him quickly. Long story short we ran a hundred tests over the next two days and came home last night. With very few answers. And follow up appointments to try to figure it out. He is doing well and acting like his regular crazy self.

But the fear. Holy fucking shit, the fear. It's paralyzing. I watched as nurses swarmed and surrounded him. And I thought I was going to lose him. I thought I was going to bury him next to my sweet Jocelyn. Obviously I didn't. And I'm not. But man.

Now that things have settled down, it's left me thinking about the fear in general that follows loss.
It's so intense. An intensity that I never knew in the before. It carries with it, an expectation of worst case scenarios. So vivid. So real.

Because these scenarios are not simply imagined. They are remembered.

We have lived worst case scenarios. The innocence that protected us once upon a time, has been brutally shattered. We no longer say things like, "Oh my god, I can't imagine" when we hear horrific stories of death. Because we can imagine. More than that, we can remember. We know.

When medical crisis hits, there are no thoughts of panic asking what are we to do. There are no moments of uncertainty. At least not for me. I knew exactly what we would do if we lost him. And my mind went to the cemetery. To the empty plot below my daughters.

And that? That is really fucked up.